Aprisma this week will announce a software module for its Spectrum network management platform it says will let network professionals control and monitor enterprise applications.

The company's Spectrum Application Manager is intended to alert users if back-end databases such as Oracle go down, or if server applications such as Apache Web server or server operating systems themselves are having problems. The company says Application Manager will integrate into the Spectrum net management package, letting users monitor and control all the hardware and software elements in their networks from a single console.

Application Manager is based on technology from Dirig Software. In addition to integrating the Dirig code into the Spectrum platform, Aprisma will resell Dirig's application management tool as a stand-alone product.

Spectrum lets users manage the elements in an enterprise network by providing an overall topology view of SNMP-manageable devices, such as routers, hubs and switches. The software also lets users remotely configure data communications equipment on their networks and create alert settings for network elements.

Application Manager is based on software agents that are installed on network servers. The agents collect data on a server's health and the status of applications running on a server and report back to a central Spectrum console. Spectrum can be used to configure and restart services and applications from servers anywhere in an enterprise from one console. The software agents can support applications running on Microsoft Windows NT and 2000, Sun Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, Free BSD and IBM's AIX.

Spectrum is used to manage the network at Aurora Health Care, a healthcare provider with over 100 sites in eastern Wisconsin. Kim Kloskey, WAN network engineer for the firm, says she plans to integrate Application Manager into her network, which has more than 250 servers that support a central healthcare management application, as well as standard office productivity software. Kloskey says she likes the idea of bringing applications on her network into the Spectrum fold.

"We're hoping that [Application Manager] will allow us to do a lot more end-to-end management of our network," she says. Application Manager can also supply users with detailed logs of application faults throughout the network. This could be useful to enterprises and network management service providers for providing reports on a network's performance.

Application Manager follows the recent addition of Spectrum Security Manager (SSM), which was released in January. SSM is a stand-alone software product that when used with the Spectrum management platform, correlates security alarms and alerts with network performance data.

Aprisma is shipping Dirig's Application Manager software immediately and will start shipping the integrated Spectrum/Dirig product June 1. For customers already using Spectrum, adding Application Manager will cost $30,000, plus $500 to $900 per server agent, depending on the number of agents ordered.

This story, "Aprisma set to manage applications" was originally published by
Network World.